On Sun, 30 Oct 2005, Derek Martin wrote:
On Sat, Oct 29, 2005 at 09:56:16PM -0700, David Abbott wrote:
I have to say. Being new to Linux and trying to administer my own
system I have had loads of trouble.
That's pretty normal, when you're new to something, generally.
I am trying to work out how to compile my own kernel because the
basic setup to install the Nvidia drivers doesn't work on my Dell
Inspiron 9300. The Go6800 is a pretty standard card. i wouldn't
have imagined that it should be difficult.
This you can blame on nvidia, for refusing to release the specs of
their hardware so that a proper driver could be integrated into the
Kernel. Instead, we're dependent upon them to try to support a
binary-only kernel module on dozens of different versions of the Linux
kernel (both official releases, and also vendor-modified kernels).
They are clearly not up to the task. Not that we should expect they
would be; it's a pretty big task... But it becomes a small task if
nvidia either releases source code for their drivers, or releases
complete specs to their hardware, so that a driver can be written and
maintained as part of the Linux kernel proper.
But (rightly or wrongly) video card makers consider these two pieces of
information to be their competitive edge. So you are not likely to see
them releasing either, at least for their latest cards. Also, Linux users
still aren't a very large fraction of their customer base.
It also would be a small task if there were standards that allowed them to
write a single installer that would work with any distribution, without
having to deal with loads of special cases.
Nevertheless, I've found that the NVIDIA drivers work reasonably well. I
use the RPM packages from rpm.livna.org, but there are also packages from
atrprms.net. These are updated rapidly when new official kernels come
out, and they aren't hard to rebuild if necessary for other cases.
You could also "blame" Red Hat and Fedora for their policy of not
including proprietary/binary-only packages in their distributions. I
admire them for sticking to their guns on this issue, but it does affect
usability, particularly with respect to cartain hardware drivers and
multimedia codecs.
Another issue is that Fedora Core is intended to be a cutting edge
development platform, and as such there will always be bugs. In some
ways I think it is really not a very good choice for someone venturing
into the world of Linux for the first time... particularly for people
who are not already somewhat adept with computers. Except that you
will learn a lot by figuring out how to fix all the bugs and make your
system work the way you want it to. So in that regard, it's a good
thing. ;-)
I will persist, and continue my studies in how this all works.
Good; if you do, you will be rewarded with a much greater
understanding of how your machine works, and why it works that way.
Enjoy!
--
Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
